Antonio Machado’s “Caminante, no hay camino” is one of those poems I return to again and again. From it, I catch courage to live creatively. The original Spanish is followed by my English translation:
Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino y nada más;
Caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace el camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante no hay camino
sino estelas en la mar.
Wayfarer, your footprints
are the way and nothing more;
Wayfarer, there is no way,
the way is made by walking.
By walking the way is made,
and on looking back
the path is seen that never
again will be trod.
Wayfarer there is no way
but wakes on the sea.
When I was in my mid-twenties, I remember looking around and noting that there was no one in my life of whom I could say, “I want my life to look just like theirs.” Sure, there were aspects of other people’s lives that I admired and aspired to: one person was a compassionate and convicting preacher, another created community for and with folks who had been thrown away by society, another was a gifted pastor whose very presence catalyzed healing. But there was no one person I could look at as the model of what I wanted to be when I grew up.
As Machado says, we make the way by walking it.
I recall this being a rather jarring discovery, even as, with time, it has proven to be incredibly freeing. Remembering that there is no one person to model my life on means freedom from comparison. Even more so, it means permission to free myself from unrealistic, perfectionistic self-expectations.
What extraordinary freedom to walk through the world trusting that there is no fixed path to follow, but that your footsteps make the path.
On his fourth birthday, my friend asked her son what he wants to be when he grows up.
“Just a regular person,” he said.
Me too, buddy.
No shade to those kids who want to be a firefighter/ballerina/astronaut/unicorn, but I want to be a regular person when I grow up too. No comparisons necessary. No perfectionistic expectations. Just a regular person with gifts and potential, hurts and hangups, questions and doubts, hopes and fears, and more grace than I could ever know what to do with.
Being regularly oneself is about integrity and authenticity. To regularly show up as the person you are takes tremendous commitment, courage, and creativity. It is an exquisite gift to be a regular person, as the people around you catch courage for living their own regular lives.
I hope, at the end of my life, that I will look back and think, “That path will never again be walked, and wasn’t I lucky to have walked it?”
There are people who accompany us at different stages of the journey. Some for perhaps just a few steps, others for many miles. But from birth to death, the journey is uniquely, regularly, ours.
We make the movement by… moving
It seems to me that this is also true collectively. While we derive powerful insight from historic movements for justice — borrowing from strategy, gleaning language, catching courage from the example of leaders past — when it comes down to it, we make the way by walking together.
We could exert all our energy comparing ourselves to others and never get moving ourselves. We could set unrealistic expectations we will never be able to meet and grow frustrated before we make an impact.
Yet, as Machado reminds us, each person is on their own unique journey. And so, what makes our movements extraordinary is the collective commitment, courage and creativity of hundreds, thousands, millions of regular people. Our journey for justice is as unique as the exquisite tapestry of human experiences represented by those moving together.
There is no singular set of footprints in which a movement ought to walk, though there are ways to walk that have been shown to be powerfully transformative. By this I mean, not a set path, so much as a paying attention to how we are walking. This includes a loving relationship with the earth and all who share her lands. A sensitivity to new information. An openness to companions on the way. A keen awareness of Spirit and respect of those ancestors who walked their own unique paths before us. A deep regard for those who will come after us.
I wonder: What courage might we catch by ceasing to compare our movements to one another? What creativity could be unleashed by discovering that perfectionism is an exercise in futility?
What freedom awaits us as we embrace this reality: We make the movement by moving together.